In 2024 and 2025, Urban will be piloting the implementation of the action plan Towards the decolonisation of public space in the Brussels Capital Region, which was approved by the government of the Brussels Capital Region in May 2023.
Based on the recommendations set out in the working group’s report, published in February 2022, the aim is to implement fourteen actions. Urban is involved across the board, with thirteen of the fourteen initiatives being led by staff from various departments of Urban.
Governance
A support committee ensures that the action plan is implemented. It consists of representatives from several of the regional and federal institutions involved, researchers and members of civil society associations (action 1). *see below for the list of partners
Since spring 2024, a coordinator has been appointed and is working at Urban to ensure the day-to-day monitoring of the action plan (action 2).
Inventory and documentation
Urban’s Cultural Heritage Department is working to identify and map colonial traces in the Brussels Capital Region and to complete the inventories of immovable, movable and natural heritage (action 3).
It also provides information on the recent creation of decolonial traces.
On 17 May 2024, the municipality of Koekelberg inaugurated the rue Gemba. This pays tribute to a woman who was forcibly exhibited with 266 other Congolese people in villages (human zoos) recreated in Tervuren Park for the 1897 Universal Exhibition. Ms Gemba died during the exhibition from an illness caused by the detention conditions.
Memory
Through various initiatives from the action plan and in collaboration with its partners, Urban is evaluating the best way of passing on the memories of Belgian colonisation (actions 7, 9 and 11). In this respect, the initiatives that have sprung up at association and community level are inspiring.
On 11 November 2024, the Bakushinta association organised a tribute to the Congolese soldiers and resistance fighters of the two world wars on Square Riga (Schaerbeek).
A month earlier, the municipality of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode inaugurated a monument to “pay tribute to the veterans of the Congo Public Force, the volunteers and the resistance fighters who fought in the two world wars” at the Saint-Josse-ten-Noode cemetery.
